Seven and Serai’s Birthday Bash

We only do birthday parties on odd years, and because all of our kids have a sibling with a birthday that falls within 3-6 days of their own, we pair everyone up for joint birthday celebrations. This means I get to save up all my enthusiasm for party planning and go nuts about once a year.

You’ve probably seen Seven’s Dr. Seuss party and you know that I can get a little out of control. I’ve covered our entire living room with blankets for a pillow fort party, and thrown some massive outdoor summer flings since then. We’ve talked about it before many times, but it bears repeating because it’s just oh-so-true: the detailed birthday party is my love language.

As soon as I realized Seven’s monumental 7th birthday and Serai’s big number 5 would coincide, I was fully prepared to pull out all the stops for an extravagant extravaganza. I’ve been thinking about those crazy plans for years, but then something happened…

I actually got to the point where I had a 7 year old and a 5 year old, and you know what’s a dream birthday party to them?

Going to a jump place with their friends and then having everyone sleep over and eat cheap pizza.

They have some expectations for their birthday cakes I make for them, but it really is that easy.

Add to this that Serai is an introvert and inviting a ton of people over at once is her own personal hell, plans obviously got severely scaled back.

And you know what? That’s ok! It’s not about me and my crazy party plans anyway. The whole point of the over-the-top parties is to give my kids something really special that they’ll never forget and now that they’re older, I’m taking their lead on what that looks like.

So we went jumping.

We had a small group of their good buddies over.

We ordered Little Caesar’s pizza and sat out everyone’s collective weight in popcorn and candy.

We let a small herd of kids stay up way past their bedtime.

We even topped it off with the dream breakfast of pancakes loaded down with mounds of whipped cream.

It was simple and sweet and just what they wanted. And because it was what they wanted, it made my party enthusiast heart happy.